"The last few months of the moontide - when the bridge connecting East and West rises above the sea - has come, and in the West Emperor Constant prepares the final phase of his plan to conquer the East. For failed mage Alaron and his companion Ramita - widow to the mage who built the Leviathan Bridge - the unthinkable has happened. They have lost the Scytale of Corineus, the key to the Rite of Ascendancy, as well as one of Ramita's infant sons, to...